Question: are there more red blood cells in the body than white blood cells?

Hannah Greenwood answered on 18 Jun 2015:

There are trillions more red blood cells than white in our circulation. Our red cells are there to transport oxygen to our tissues so we need huge amounts of cells to be able to do this effectively, think if all that muscle alone that needs oxygen! However, when we get ill, the number of white blood cells in our circulation increases dramatically. White blood cells are produced in our bone marrow which also stores a huge ‘reserve’ of mature white blood cells ready to be released into the blood when we get ill. The number of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) can increase 10 fold during an infection – that’s 10x more neutrophils released everyday when we are ill compared to when we’re healthy …. that’s alot of cells!